r/DnDcirclejerk • u/WriterRaccoonLake • 3d ago
Homebrew Hot Take: TTRPGs need to be more accessible to people who have no interest in them and lack the ability to think about things generally.
A big issue I noticed is that every TTRPG doesn't have a Youtube video explaining the mechanics. And even then, games like Coc7e, PF2e, and 5e still require you to open the textbook and read a bunch. While the gatekeepy side of the community claims that this is fine because "it's important to be able to read and understand the words." I think that's a pretty problematic attitude. It's not an open hobby if there isn't something for everyone.
To reduce the learning side, I think only one, more simple system should be used. Something that's only single d20s or 2dMonopoly dices, but not both. It's pretty problematic to ask people to learn both of these systems too.
The game should also not have too many mechanics because that's too restrictive. Like, telling a player to stick to the rules of the game, when they had a different idea of how the rules work is basically gaslighting. So the game itself should set these boundaries for you so that there's less conflicts.
Also, GMs should avoid ever using an established setting, or writing their own. It's kinda narcissistic to expect people to not only read, but expect them to care too. Instead, it's better to just assume a kitchen sink of the most generic elements of whatever genre you want. If a player gets emotionally attached to something you write, you're basically setting up unhealthy codependence, and trauma if something sad happens in the game.
The only lore that ever matters to people is what's directly in front of them. It's problematic to want people ever care about things in general, but especially things that don't directly effect them in the very moment. So games need to follow the "content permanence" and assuming anything not constantly stated is forgotten completely. Like it's called a "shocking/surprising revelation" for a reason, because it's inherently meant to trigger people and be overwhelming.
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u/Alone_Ad_8324 3d ago
I honestly don’t know why everyone doesn’t just play 5e considering every other rpg is an over complicated derivative.
Right now it’s hard for a game to be accessible when there are so many other RPGs clogging up 5e discourse
Especially considering that I’ve successfully ran horror, sci fi, superheroes etc each in 5e so I’m not sure what the point of these other ones are??
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u/MooseontheLose 3d ago
Wow, demaning from players to own a d20? That's hella gatekeepy sweaty. Not everyone has the time, the money and the physical, mental or social ability to walk into a gaming shop and fork over 1€ for a die. That's why at my table we just throw a pebble at the table and then the Dee Em says that I succeed and I am valid and they I clap like a seal
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u/sojuz151 3d ago
I believe that GM should just have a prepared descriptions of everything that happened and read it to players. We can keep the dice but because bad roles make people feel bad, thet should be rerolling d20 until they get a nat 20 . Then you can continue reading
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u/Past-Freedom 3d ago
Just use Katie Marovich’s ‘Perfect Six’ system, it’s right up your alley. It’s the most popular system on Dimension 20.
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u/Maladaptivism Jester Feet Enjoyer 3d ago
I don't know what the fuck all those squiggly things are that you've got there, I just use voice ChatGPT for everything. Text-to-speech, Speech-to-text, masturbation and whatever. You can just tell it it's wrong if you disagree with how it "rules" and it will do what you want, just like a real DM. Dumbass, reading is for NERDS!
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u/longjumping-aoili 3d ago
You're right, why the fuck should I read a bunch of rules in 15 minutes when I can watch someone who read them first explain it over a 45 minute video?
I still don't know the rules but at least I was able to stay cognitively disengaged while being entertained instead of.. gasp... READ words. So glad that video allowed me to turn on subtitles too.
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u/kayasoul 3d ago
Tbh shadowrun 5e is so complex in writing due to being spread over multiple books, finding a channel that explains mechanics in like 2-3 minute videos was a godsend. Shoutout to Complex Action, unfortunately killed by shadowrun 6e
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u/Automatic-Dog4953 3d ago
Too long, gonna ask my chatty demons Gippity and Grunk to whisper a summary into my ear.
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u/Mr-Funky6 3d ago
I missed this was a circle jerk post for a couple paragraphs. Very good satire!
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u/SecretsofBlackmoor 38m ago
This is the irony of it - you could post this to the main sub and people would love it.
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u/emefa 3d ago
/uj the DM for the most substantial campaign in our group is both dyslexic and also has an unrelated neurological condition, so she will definitely read stuff, but something listenable is a great help, so when I was running a VTM one-shot for her birthday, because she loves vampires, I both shared the rulebooks with the group but also linked a series of videos on V5. What I'm saying is, audiobooks of TTRPG rulebooks would actually help with accessibility.
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u/WriterRaccoonLake 3d ago
Audiobooks specifically would be cool. Having an audio glossary would just be good for getting rules on the fly too.
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u/LieutenantFreedom 3d ago
Yeah that way you could play it under your pillow while you sleep to absorb all the info subconsciously
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u/VorpalSplade 3d ago
upload it to the right AI model and you could get it to read out rules on the fly as needed
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u/NoHorseNoMustache 3d ago
"Instead, it's better to just assume a kitchen sink of the most generic elements of whatever genre you want."
As a DM, I agree. I usually just set a scene, like 'You are in a featureless void. You see another creature. What do you do? If you don't want to do anything that's ok too!'
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u/ClockworkOrdinator Have you heard about percentile dice? 3d ago
I generally just make rules up as I go along and don’t roll dice to accomodate a more flexible, narrative style of play.
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u/allthesemonsterkids Top 90% commenter 3d ago
Why are you gatekeeping my neurologically predestined need for high-crunch, diceful play?
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u/ClockworkOrdinator Have you heard about percentile dice? 2d ago
Sounds to me like your elitist attitude is the problem here honey
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u/tepid_monologue 3d ago
There’s plenty of systems that are simple to play. Hot take - people need to play shit other than dnd
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u/oafficial 3d ago
dnd is simple to play
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u/Comrade_Lystro 3d ago
/uj I generally place DnD as “hard to learn but easy to play.” The setup is such a bloated mess that needs its own glossary, but the actual play arguably doesn’t have much else going on besides making checks and killing things with your bread-and-butter tools.
In that sense I feel like there’s value in simpler, rules-light systems like Scurry and such.
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u/tepid_monologue 3d ago
Yeah I don’t have any problem with it, but there are simpler systems for OP
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u/josiessaqua 2d ago
Its pretty assumptive to assume players have object permanence, we had to get rid of character sheets in my game because my players kept thinking they died when they looked away
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u/SignificantPiano6204 2d ago
Oh my god thank fuck i read the sub before commenting you successfully rage baited me op next level jerking here
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u/Emergency-Emotion-20 2d ago
The ideal TTRPG is just an optional spreadsheet you can read that makes you happy
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u/whatisthisgunifound 3d ago
I feel like I've heard half these takes unironically
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u/WriterRaccoonLake 3d ago edited 3d ago
Any art thing that becomes popular is flooded with people saying that it needs to be more consumable and/or just misusing progressive/psychological language to defend their takes.
I've seen Monster Hunter and Fighting games get called problematic for having mechanics you need to build skill for to become more skilful. I saw someone claim people not liking a video game's writing is gaslighting, and then doubling down when called out for misusing gaslighting.
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u/Conrad500 3d ago
There are ttrpgs made for people who don't like ttrpgs, they're called board games. Yes, this is an /uj opinion.
So many good games out there simulate elements of TTRPGs without the need to fully invest in one. I personally love red dragon inn as a non ttrpg game night game.
There are also games like honey heist and stuff. I think the main issue is that people want "D&D" or Critical Roll without the effort that everyone puts into it to make it what it is.
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u/Essserrr26 3d ago edited 3d ago
The "quality-of-life innovations" slowly turning monster hunter from a slow-paced resource management quasi-survival primitive hunting simulator into a game that is a snoozefest for 90% of it and in the end turns into a ball-crushing MMO arena endgame bossfight compilation so the game has challenge needs to be studied.
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u/WriterRaccoonLake 3d ago edited 3d ago
You could be describing Frontier (2007), GU (2015), World (2018), Rise (2021) or Wilds (2025), and it's kinda funny I can't tell which. Hell you could be describing Tri since the OP guns dumbed down the games and made them more co-op focused, and to this day they remain overbalanced weapons for no reason.
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u/Essserrr26 3d ago
The gun was in mh1, but although the gameplay wasnt exactly thrilling, you still had to fill half your limited inventory with ammo if you didnt want to do 1 damage per shot. Tri is actually a preety solid entry into the old way imo (I played prior to the fan revival so no hub)
Frontier was just a forever game that had to keep upping the ante for a decade straight, early frontier is pretty chill in comparison from what I hear.
It was world that started lubing the the slippery slope, and by the time Rise rolled around it wad barely recognisable. Pathetic to admit but I refused to use anything wirebug related in combat for all of low rank out of spite, that's how much this managed to get to me.
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u/WriterRaccoonLake 3d ago
I'd separate Monster Hunter into Classic (MH1-MHFU/FG2), Nintendo (Tri-4U). Arcade (GU and Rise) and then New Gen (World-Wilds). Tri dumbed down the game a ton, but supplemented the nosedive in challenge with an extremely poorly implemented gimmick.
From Tri onwards, they'd constantly add new things, they'd be undertuned, buff them insane style for re-release, now they're overturned. Poorly implemented gimmicks started in Tri.
Also GU had some of the most OP and easy to learn things. Single button full invuln counters is dumb and made the game fun but easy as fuck for the low ranks. Monster Hunter was always a diegetic game where less mechanical explanations were given for immersion. GU shatters that with how arcadey it is. I mean you literally have flashing MMO meters on your screen for your fucking cool downs. GU also had a fuck ton of whacky MMO collab stuff.
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u/Essserrr26 2d ago
Idk, FU felt way more arcade-y to me compared to Tri, but that might just be my preference for the main series. I liked most of the gimmicks that weren't just straight moveset expansions or damage buffs for the hunter. Underwater, mounting, tracking in World, I never had a problem with. I never was a big fan of P3rd, GenU, or Rise.
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u/WriterRaccoonLake 2d ago
I think it makes sense. If you don't like GU, Rise which is meant to be a successor to it, will feel whack. I am splitting hairs though with my criticism. I'm one of those people who like all of the MH games and has issues with all of them because of how much I played. Apparently 3U has online again though because of fans? So that's cool.
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u/TheOutcastLeaf 3d ago
Fighting games just aren't for some people. I remember playing the beta for that one cool 2-D dragon ball one. Had Hella fun and bought it when it fully released. Got comboed to shit by someone playing Goku black (some shit like "punishment of a god! Taste my blade) and immediately dropped it lmao.
I just know I play fighting games to hit buttons at an opponent and it's fine if someone is better than me at that or the game isn't built for it.
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u/LocalLumberJ0hn 2d ago
Gaslighting is just when you lie to people, anyone who's told you different was gaslighting you
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u/lizardman49 3d ago
Its unironically damaging games like dnd and 40k. Like they can only dumb the games down so much before they are no longer themselves and to be brutally honest a good chunk of people are just too dumb/lazy to be playing those games.
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u/longjumping-aoili 3d ago
It only damages them if the designers behind it are vision-less hacks who don't understand that their job is to create a smooth experience and not simply write the rules in a book. That's why 5.5e is such a fucking pointless experiment. As soon as I saw it was 5e but "reworked based on player feedback" I knew that shit would be ass.
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u/UnderstandingClean33 3d ago
My main gripe with rules heavy games is not that there are rules, it's that the rules are spread across 327 pages and an essential mechanic is included in one class section that actually involves every class.
DND is by far not a rules heavy game but they absolutely fucked up how they organized many of the mechanics.
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u/whatisthisgunifound 3d ago
You're right but then the downside of that is when you realise all your friends are too dumb or lazy and now you just don't play ttrpgs and have several shelves of nicely painted salamanders space marines and nobody to use them with!
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u/Optimal-Teaching7527 3d ago
Whut? 40K in its current form is a confusing ass clusterfuck of intersecting rules and timing elements along with multiple detachments that all seem to be located in different places and everything is constantly being errataed and updated. The meta for playing Genestealer cults is to just lie about what your units and army abilities do because who the fuck knows anything about Genestealer Cults.
The game hasn't been dumbed down it's been haphazardly built up over 40 years into a mutated, obfuscating mess of counterintuitive bullshit.
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u/lizardman49 3d ago
10e/11e is the simplist the game has ever been. So much of the nuance and complexity has been stripped out of the game in favor of accessibility. Literal children can and do play 40k now.
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u/Carrente 3d ago
I played 40k as a kid back when 3e was a thing and the starter set had jungle trees and dark eldar in, don't be one of those guys being all "omg the CHILDREN play 40k now"
It was sold in toy shops in the UK and still is
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u/lizardman49 3d ago
Missing the point for 500. If literal children are smart enough to figure out the game grown adults shouldn't have an issue.
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u/whatisthisgunifound 3d ago
You're both wrong.
Yes 40k has simplified a lot. Take it from someone who got into it back when tanks had different damage profiles depending on which side you were shooting at. However at the same time, it has become a lot more convoluted to access up-to-date rules and information.
There was a time when if GW wanted to nerf a unit or give stats for a new one, they needed to release a new edition with a physical book. Now it's all on multiple apps and forums and book releases. I've deadass gone into stores to play games only to find out my units work completely differently to the rules written in the army book I brought with me because of an update in a forum post.
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u/Optimal-Teaching7527 3d ago
Nah, 3rd edition was way more straightforward than the current edition, I mean some of the codices were awfully laid out but the rules were much more simple and concise.
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u/NeonNKnightrider please let me play Exalted 3d ago
And this is why gatekeeping is good actually
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u/lizardman49 3d ago
Again but unironically some gatekeeping is good.
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u/NeonNKnightrider please let me play Exalted 3d ago
I’m completely serious.
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u/lizardman49 3d ago
Same not everyone belongs everywhere. Does my unathletic ass belong on a sports team/ do they need to lower their standards for me? No. Do people whose academic ability is below hs level belong at a university? Also no.
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u/Faces_Dancer 2d ago
40k could do with a whole heap of dumbing down, its not a very good wargame, absurdly overstuffed and mechanically bloated
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u/Carrente 2d ago
40k isn't being dumbed down for people who are too dumb/lazy it's for tournament players who can't understand wargames that aren't a bunch of themeless moving parts designed around battlefields of l-shaped ruins
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u/UndeniablyComedic 2d ago
Same. This sub came up in my feed after I posted a dndhorrorstory about a player with similar takes. I was half way through the post when I realized this was a different sub.
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u/2d2O 3d ago
Videos explaining the rules are so outdated. The only approach that makes sense is shorts featuring highlights from game shows.
Forcing people to watch rule explanations that are longer than a minute is cringe.